Presidential politics from Fort Lee to Benghazi

Jan. 6, 2014

Francis Reilly

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The same Democrats steadily bitching about California Republican Congressman Darrell Issa’s insistence on continuing to pursue the truth of what happened in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, are positively chortling over N.J. Democrat Assemblyman John Wisniewski’s heavy-handed push to investigate the George Washington Bridge lane closure he suspects was political retaliation on behalf of Gov. Chris Christie. And well they should.

The governor will get no E-ZPass on this deal, especially now that his two political appointees to the Port Authority have up and resigned from their posts, albeit without any apparent reason. The suspicion is that the Port Authority’s unannounced three day closure of two New York-bound lanes on the George Washington Bridge, and the traffic chaos that ensued, was retaliation against Fort Lee’s Democrat Mayor Mark Sokolich for refusing to endorse Christie in last year’s re-election campaign.

Fort Lee is the town we sit in while waiting to cross the GW into New York. Reportedly, on the days those two lanes were closed — ostensibly to conduct some as yet undefined “traffic study” — lots and lots of folks sat stranded in Fort Lee waiting to squeeze down into the remaining open lanes to cross the bridge. It was, according to Fort Lee-ans, an absolute nightmare.

Now really, who would do such a petty thing as to arbitrarily close busy bridge lanes for mere political purpose? And in New Jersey, even! Well sir, Mr. Wisniewski, a devout anti-Christie-an, believes that person to be none other than our second-term governor, the bombastic Mr. Christie. His is a conclusion in search of a rationale, and so he will convene N.J. Assembly committee hearings intended to burrow deeply into the morass, hoping he’ll discover the governor’s fingerprints somewhere on the bridge approach.

Lest you think this some tempest in a teapot, be advised that Democrat West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller wants to hold federal hearings as well, and the Associated Press sits nearby, clearly salivating.

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This is all fascinating political theater, particularly in contrast to Mr. Issa’s pursuit of the figurative smoking gun that might settle the blame for the real smoking guns that blazed through Benghazi and killed four Americans that fateful night. It is certainly not to suggest that the inconvenience of a North Jersey traffic jam is in any way akin to four murdered Americans. Rather, it is in the context of the closer-than-you-think 2016 presidential election that the two pursuits collide.

Chris Christie sits at the top of the leader board predicting the Republicans’ 2016 presidential nominee, and he has been running hard for the office for 18 months or more. If it’s discovered that the GW was not a bridge too far for his political machine to manipulate, he will be seen as nothing more than a petty politician (pardon the redundancy) burnishing his bully image at the expense of everyday commuters in retaliation against a perceived enemy. You would think that would disqualify him from the presidency, though the current White House occupant has certainly significantly lowered that bar.

Meanwhile, back in Benghazi, congressional investigators sift through the rubble in hopes of defining then-Secretary of State Hilary Clinton as, at worst a cover-up co-conspirator, at best an inattentive, laissez faire resume builder happily hopping about the globe while ignoring the warning signs of trouble on the Libyan horizon. Mrs. Clinton is her own party’s presumptive presidential candidate, and any substantive evidence of her complicity in a Benghazi cover-up would probably torpedo her candidacy as well. Her congressional testimony screech in response, “What possible difference does it make!” may one day surpass “I never had sex with that woman, not once.” as the top Clinton family quote of all time.

Could it be, then, that sometime between now and November 2015, both current front-runners will be wistfully watching from home as a bunch of also-rans competes for Top Gun? Or have our standards fallen so low that, even if both are found culpable, half the country will accept the bully for the pulpit, and the other half will still go gaga over the liar?

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